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Even though many investors are worried that breaching the U.S. debt ceiling will cause the stock market to tumble, the message from the major volatility benchmark and global financial markets is more encouraging.

Equity volatility historically moves in roughly 5½-year cycles, and the latest one may be in the process of concluding. If that's true, the financial markets could be entering a prolonged period of low volatility, during which gauges of stock-market risk, such as the VIX, remain subdued. While bumping up against the debt ceiling in the mid-February to early March window poses an obvious threat and should be hedged, investors also should consider how to position their portfolios for a subsequent environment of potentially higher equity returns and lower volatility.

After four years of relative calm, the VIX began to rise in July 2007, signaling a new regime a month before the financial crisis intensified. The volatility measure remained elevated, staying above a mid-teens reading through the fall of 2007, when the S&P 500 peaked at about 1,565, and into 2008 as calamities like the collapse of Bear Stearns triggered spikes. In the fall of 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, generating a shock that pushed S&P 500 volatility to its third-highest level in the past 90 years, behind the crashes of 1929 and 1987. Over the ensuing four years, a series of aftershocks occurred, as the financial crisis progressed toward the current debt-ceiling ruckus.

More interdependence among economies and financial markets around the world has meant that even moderate volatility increases can pose systemic risk. Most stock performance has been highly correlated, and even pricing of various asset classes has followed the same trend, which has led to the "risk on/risk off" jargon of the past few years. But these regimes of high volatility and correlation are cyclical and synchronized with underlying economic cycles. Since the mid-'80s, these 5½-year cycles usually have gone from high to low volatility within a couple years after a recession reaches its trough. The current regime is now 3½ years beyond the June 2009 recession and recently surpassed the average duration of past cycles, indicating that regime change could be in order. History suggests this new environment, if it arrives, will be constructive for equity investors: The S&P 500 rises 67% of the time when the VIX averages 14, compared with 53% of the time when volatility averages 24, as it has over the past several years.

There are hints that a transition is underway. Last fall, during the most volatile period of the year, the VIX remained generally suppressed. In December, the prospect of the fiscal cliff pushed the VIX toward 25 before it collapsed back below 14, to its lowest level since mid-2007. Equity-volatility cycles in both Europe and Asia appear to be leading the U.S. -- they've broken sharply below their respective floors since mid-2007. This phenomenon is not restricted to equities. Global currency volatility began to decline sharply in mid-2012 and is approaching its lows of the past 20 years, while credit and rate volatility are also generally benign.

Washington's debt-ceiling negotiations will provide a formidable test. In recent years, a similar obstacle would have prompted a recommendation for aggressive portfolio hedging, including long volatility exposure to capture the convexity of a shock. However, the markets' recent ability to handle such disruptions implies a more constructive outcome, even though a U.S. default or downgrade could be catastrophic. As a result, protecting individual stocks or sectors is the best course, given the likelihood that a pullback in stocks will not trigger a broader systemic event. Flat skew -- when bearish puts are attractively valued relative to bullish calls -- makes zero-premium collars, or sale of out-of-the-money calls to finance the purchase of puts, in March or April expiries an attractive strategy to hedge long positions. This should enable portfolios to weather the debt ceiling and emerge in what may be a more tranquil environment for financial markets.

JIM STRUGGER is a derivatives strategist at MKM Partners, a trading firm in Stamford, Conn.